RECENT RESEARCH — A newly unearthed photograph showing the north side of the 600 block of Commercial Street, San Francisco, in the aftermath of the earthquake and fires of 1906 reveals, for the first time, visual evidence of the fate of the building that housed the Eureka Lodgings, where Emperor Norton lived from 1864–65 until his death in 1880. Our analysis of the photo sharpens the focus on the identities and locations of the buildings along this stretch — and exactly what each building suffered in 1906. Includes our highly researched new infographic that can be used as a tool for understanding the history of this location.

The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

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James Kenneth Piggott, Early Photographer of the Emperor's Bridge

November 27, 2013  /  John Lumea

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened in November 1936.

Some of the earliest photographs of the bridge were taken in 1936 by James Kenneth Piggott, a commercial photographer who made his living, in part, as a printer and publisher of postcards. Three of these 1936 bridge photographs, which probably were published as postcards, are below.

It turns out that Piggott, who died in 1941, was born — in tiny Bodega Corners, Calif., in Sonoma County — in 1859, the same year that Joshua Abraham Norton declared himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States."

Did Piggott ever have occasion, as a boy or young man, to meet the Emperor? Certainly, he would have known about him.

To learn more about Piggott, read the excellent biographical profile in the October 2012 newsletter of the San Francisco Bay Area Postcard Club.

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